Sheryl
by gerbilHunter
Summary: DNAmy combines Ron and Shego, in an attempt to create someone who will return Monty from statue to human. Things do not work out quite as she anticipates. Kim wants Ron back, Amy wants Monty, and Sheryl wants to be Sheryl. Whoever that is.
1. That's Gotta Hurt

**Sheryl**

This fanfic is kind of in response to a challenge mentioned by Chris the Cynic in the notes to her story "Fusion", and is directly influenced and inspired by that story. Actually, it's more a response to the story than it is to the challenge.

Ron and Shego are melded by DNAmy, in an attempt to recover Monkeyfist from his state as statue. It seemed a fun and interesting structure. In her notes, Chris mentions the morality of splitting the combined person back into the originals. That seemed something fun to explore, but that takes an actual writer, and I am not one.

Note that I have not actually read the challenge, and am not claiming to meet it. I just felt like writing the story.

I've labeled this as humor, but it isn't really going to be all that funny.

Usual disclaimer: I own nothing of the Kim Possible universe.

* * *

 **Chapter 1: That's gotta hurt  
**

Fuck, that hurts. In fact, everything effing hurts.

All I knew, those first few seconds, was that I hurt all over. A clear, curved door was opening, and I slumped out of the cylinder in which I was half-reclining and sprawled onto the floor. A floor tiled in cheap vinyl, white and black checks. No taste. If a lab were built in the community center of a Midwest America trailer park, it might look like this lab. At least the tiles were cool against my skin.

And it was a lot of skin. I was naked. My breasts pressed against the floor, and I pushed myself up. The effort felt good, and I did a couple more push-ups, just for fun. The pain flared in my arms, then lessened as I did them. Maybe I just needed motion and exercise. I rolled to my feet and stood, to find a stout, remarkably plain woman staring at me from several feet away. Her haircut was at once ugly and boring, and it looked as if gorilla feet were peeking from beneath her long, shapeless skirt. She was smiling for all she was worth, delighted by something. Probably me, which struck me as odd. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew that people were not in general delighted to be in my company.

"Amy". I knew this woman. Amy Hall, known as DNAmy, the best genetic engineer on the planet, and deeply, seriously crazy. I didn't remember her, exactly, but I knew her. And if I were stumbling out of a machine in any lab with which she had anything to do, it could only mean that I had been the subject of one of her insane experiments. Anger flared reflexively as I realized that. I let my head rock on my shoulders, stretching my neck as I looked around the large room. The muscles in my neck and shoulders complained, but responded.

It was a lab, for damn certain. There were power distribution panels against one wall, messy worktables and blocky machines scattered about the floor, shelves stocked with jars and canisters with cryptic labels (far too many of which had the radiation hazard symbol, or the skull and crossbones of poison, for my comfort), and of course the three interconnected over-sized cylinders, with pride of place against the only uncluttered wall. Battleship grey, the universal color of bureaucracy and other bad ideas. Smoke curled lazily from the top of the central cylinder, the one from which I had emerged; all three were now empty. The room was big enough for a jai alai match, and too cramped with unidentifiable crap to dance a decent jig. There were no windows. There were several doors, one a wide roller door that had to lead either to the outside, or a wide hallway leading to the outside.

I turned my attention back to the fashion disaster beaming at me. Ugly plain skirt, ugly plain blouse, ugly plain glasses. The ugly offended me. _You're a genius, for goodness' sake! You're fucking brilliant, in your own weird stupid little world of double helices and soup of life crap, and you wear plastic rims and skirts from Smarty Mart!_

Not to mention the gorilla feet. That was just wrong. Sick and wrong.

"Amy," I said again. "What the fuck have you done?"

For a few more seconds she just looked at me, watching as I rotated my hips and tried to work the lingering pain out of my muscles and joints. I did a couple of squats, my knees flaring apart, and her eyes flickered over me. There was only scientific interest there. She watched the motion of my body with medical detachment. I walked to the middle of the lab, working my legs and testing my balance. A couple of monkeys in white coats watched me from perches on lab benches. I looked away from them. I hate monkeys.

"You look great!" she gushed. "How do you feel?" She continued to look me over.

"I hurt. Every cell in my body hurts. It's getting better, but not fast enough." My voice came out harsh, a little rough. I didn't recognize it. I stretched my arms out to my sides, rotating the wrists and elbows in what I recognized as exercises from martial arts classes.

"Oh, yes." She waved a hand, brushing off my complaint. "That's unfortunate. I'll work on that."

"Yeah. Good, you do that. But first. What. The fuck. Have you done?" I was getting impatient. And annoyed. I waved a hand to emphasize my frustration, and an aura of green flame burst into life around it. "Whoa!" This was cool!

"Oh, goodie!" Amy clapped her hands twice, ecstatic. "The glow works! Can you use the Monkey Power?"

I ignored her. I waved my right hand, making circles, leaving glowing green traces in the air. I made a figure eight, a spiral, a big sweeping 'S'. "Badical!" Amy watched, smiling and clutching her hands together. After a moment, I calmed down and remembered where I was. Or, more precisely, I remembered that I had no idea where I was, nor how I came to be there.

"Amy." This time I put a bit of threat in it. "Explain. Now." I swirled a bit of flame on my fingertips for emphasis.

"I told you before. Well, one of you." Now she looked perturbed.

One of me? This was getting worse with every word. "Tell me again." I spoke slowly and clearly. I emphasized each word. I glared at her. She took a step back and swallowed.

"Oh. Yes. Well, you see, I need to change my Monty back to human, you know. He must be so bored being stone." She looked at me, clearly expecting me to agree.

Again, I knew who Monty was. Lord Montgomery Fiske, possibly farther around the bend than Amy herself. I didn't know he was stone, but it didn't surprise me. He screwed around with mystic powers and magic and other things that really ought to be left alone. He wanted to be the monkey master. He could have them - I fucking hate monkeys.

"This involves me, how?"

"Well, first I thought I would just zipper him to a monkey. He always wanted to be more monkey, anyway. But he's all stone, and my genetic zipper only works on living beings. Stuff with DNA. So, that wasn't going to work." She paused, waiting for a sign that I was following. I gave her one. Not the one I wanted to.

"Go on."

"Well, it seems to me that the only power that could change my Monty back would be the Mystical Monkey Power. But I knew Ron wouldn't use it to save Monty. He hates Monty. And he turned poor Monty to stone in the first place! So I thought it was only fair that he help turn him back." Her eyes glowed with her madness. This, clearly, was supposed to make perfect sense. I didn't know who this Ron guy was, and I didn't care. I waited for Amy to continue.

"So I blended the two of you, to make you. You should have both his monkey power, and Shego's green glow. The glow will amplify the the monkey power. I think. Anyway, you don't hate Monty, and you can change him back, and then I'll turn you back into Ron and Shego!" She actually clapped her hands again.

"The two of who?" I was getting confused, which felt a whole lot more normal than I cared for.

"You. I mean Ron and Shego. Now you're you. And you can help Monty!"

I gaped at her, awestruck by her stupidity. "Did it occur to you that I may not want to change Monty back? He's nuttier than a pecan grove. And he's a jerk. Not to mention, fucking dangerous. Why should I help him?"

Amy looked surprised. She told me again, speaking slowly and clearly, as if to a child. "After you make Monty human again, I'll change you back into Ron and Shego."

I thought a minute. I didn't know Ron, and I didn't know Shego. For that matter, I didn't know me. But whoever I was, I kind of liked being it. Even if it hurt, which it still did, and which was still making me kind of grouchy. Which also felt kind of normal. And while I didn't know much about myself yet, I did know that I don't like being pushed around. And I was coming to learn that I apparently had a pretty quick temper.

"Yeah, about that. I don't fucking think so." And I spun up a ball of fire. I don't know how I knew it would work, but it felt completely natural as I filled the sphere with power and flipped it across the room. It flew straight and true to the central cylinder, from which I had spilled, and hit dead center. The resulting explosion was bright and surprisingly muted. The cylinder was left a pile of shattered plexiglass and smoldering slag, the smell of roasted electronics wafting over to us.

"Booyah!"


	2. Chasing Amy

**Chapter 2: Chasing Amy**

At four-thirty in the afternoon, Kim Possible stood in the back yard, behind the Stoppable residence. She spoke into her Kimmunicator, incredulous. "Monkey fur? You're certain."

Wade sighed. "Of course I'm certain, Kim. The DNA, the cellular structure, it's all solid monkey. And it's a kind we've seen before."

Kim was ahead of him. His mention of DNA had triggered her thought process. "Let me guess. Monkeyfist's monkey ninjas."

"You got it. But isn't Monkeyfist a rock?"

"Yes, but Amy isn't. And she's got a thing for Fiske." Kim visibly shuddered at the thought. "I'll bet she sent the monkey ninjas after Ron. But why?"

Mrs. Stoppable stood in the doorway, looking out at Kim. "Is everything all right, Kim? Do you know what's going on?" She wrung her hands in distress. It occurred to Kim that she had read "wrung her hands" in several novels, but that she had never before seen it. "I should have known something was wrong when he wasn't at breakfast. He never misses breakfast."

"Yes, Mrs. Stoppable, everything is fine. I think. We know where Ron probably is, and I'll get him back. Wade," once more speaking into her Kimmunicator, "We do know where Ron is, right?"

The young genius looked up, his fingers never pausing on the keyboards over which they were dancing. "I think so. Fiske has an ancestral castle in northern England. I'm looking at satellite data for the past few days. It looks like there's plenty of activity there. And the power bills, yes, they went up several weeks ago. Somebody moved in, and they're up to something."

"Okay. I'm thinking Amy moved in there, set up a lab, and got the monkey ninjas to work for her. She changed herself to half-gorilla a while ago, and the monkeys are used to taking orders, so I guess that could work."

"Right." A slurp of soda. Did the overweight sub-teen ever drink anything else? Or eat, for that matter? Did he subsist on nothing but carbonated sugar-water? "I'll have a ride at your place in an hour. It will take several hours to get to England; you should land early in the morning."

As it turned out, Kim didn't get to Fiske Manor until eleven o'clock local time. She had slept on the flight, and had never been subject to jet lag, so she was rested and alert as she glided to a landing in the vast lawns of the estate. From her landing site, the manor house was hidden behind a slight rise, the top floor just visible over the well-manicured grass. The owner had been stone for several months, but clearly the staff kept up their work. They must have been used to extended absences on the part of their employer, after all. Or maybe they were trained monkeys. Either way, the grounds were lovely.

Kim let the wings fold into her jetpack and shrugged out of the straps. She checked her grappling guns and utility pouches. She got her game face on. Amy was usually a pretty easy villain to handle, but this time was over the top. Amy was insane, but she wasn't malevolent. Kidnapping was outside her usual activity set. Kim settled into mission mode as she topped the rise to get a good view of the manor house.

The house was huge, a massive square-fronted grey stone edifice with small arched windows and ornate trim. It was easily the largest non-castle Kim had ever seen. Larger than a couple of the castles she had seen. But this one had no towers on the corners. Could it be counted as a castle if there are no towers in which to imprison a maiden fair? Kim shook off the thought. Didn't matter. She looked the building over carefully, seeing nothing out of the ordinary from the front. She jogged to her right, circling the building, and noted a stream of smoke curling from a vent at ground level. So, follow the air shaft? No, not with smoke in it. And this building was hundreds of years old, with various wings and sections added over the centuries. Wade had been unable to find any kind of records of the interior. Oh well. When in doubt, take the direct approach. Her hand on her grappling gun and alert for any traps, Kim walked up to the impressive front entrance. Half expecting a hatch to open beneath her as she did so, she reached up and pulled the ornate knocker chain. A deep sound gonged inside, and in a few seconds, the door opened. A monkey in an altered, poorly-fitting tuxedo looked up at her expectantly.

"Uh, yeah, hi. Umm, is Amy here?" Kim didn't know how to deal with a monkey butler. Fortunately, the simian servant seemed to possess the fabled British aplomb. He stepped back, made a deep bow, and with a sweeping hand motion invited the heroine into the mansion.

The butler led Kim through a maze of halls, between the expected suits of armor and poorly painted portraits, over threadbare carpets, down dimly lit stone stairs, and finally to the lab in which Amy still waited. She was surrounded by dejected monkeys and several badly damaged machines of unknown purpose. A few of the monkeys showed signs of battle; one had an arm in a sling, and another was using a piece of wiring conduit as a makeshift crutch. The geneticist looked at Kim as she came warily through the door, eyes scanning the room for danger, and for signs of Ron, before settling on the scientist.

The lack of any sign of Ron, and the signs of obvious recent combat, left the teen adventurer both scared and angry. "Amy!" she called. "Where is Ron?"

"Ron?" the older woman seemed distracted. "She's gone." A vague wave towards the elevated roller doors. "She went... Somewhere. I don't know where."

The redhead had already taken a step towards the exit when she registered the pronoun. She whirled. "What? She? _She_ went somewhere? What do you mean, 'she'?"

The scientist's face went even more pallid than usual. "Umm... Well, I kind of put him together with Shego. You know, kind of like a cuddlebuddy. Only, different." The woman looked up at Kim hopefully. "You need to get her back. She needs to help with Monty."

"Uh, right. Okay. Look, start from the top." Kim knew she wouldn't like whatever it was. There was no combination of Ron, Shego, and cuddlebuddy that could possibly come out well.

The story was short, and the kind of stupid that seemed to come too often from villains. They all seemed to think that being a genius in one field meant they were masters in all others. It was a tragically flawed assumption.

"I learned what happened to Monty, and of course I need to get my Monty back to normal. So I needed the Mystical Monkey Power." Amy looked questioningly at Kim, as if to see if the redhead was following her logic. Kim sighed and waved a hand for the scientist to continue.

"Well, there are only two people besides Monty with the power. Ron and Rufus. So I sent the monkey ninjas to get them."

Kim interrupted. "Ron always beats the monkey ninjas. How did you manage to make it work this time?"

Amy looked offended. "I had them use gas. They just snuck into his house and sprayed the gas into his room. I made the gas especially for him and Rufus. I didn't want anybody to get hurt, you know."

"So Rufus is here."

"Oh, of course. If I made a mistake with Ron, I thought I could fall back on Rufus."

"Great. So why Shego?"

"Monty has told me how Ron can't control his power. But Shego has powers, and she can control hers, so I thought I would blend them. Shego could control Ron's powers, and they could help Monty, and then I'd turn them back into Ron and Shego, and everything would be just like it used to be!" She ended on a high, happy note.

Kim was less thrilled. Yeah, back to normal. A twisted maniac who thought her best friend and sweetheart was his mortal enemy, and a flame-wielding nemesis who would somehow manage to blame her for this, and would hate her even more. Woo-hoo.

"How did you get Shego involved?"

"Oh, I just hired her. She'll do most anything for enough money."

"Somehow, I don't see her agreeing to get blended with Ron, no matter how much you paid her. She hates all that sort of thing. Cloning, mind control, whatever. What she likes is fighting. Well, money and fighting."

The geneticist waved Kim's protests away. "I hired her just to come to the castle and be my bodyguard. When she got here, I sprayed her with an aerosol that knocked her out. I made it just for her. I'm really quite good at this sort of thing, you know," she added, preening a bit.

The teen heroine had heard enough. "Gahh. Great. Fine. Where's Rufus? Where might Ron, Shego, Ronsho, whoever be?"

The naked molerat was in a cage in a cupboard. He had woken up during the day, and was mightily upset to have been kept literally in the dark. He was delighted to see Kim, however. The redhead took him from the cage, and he settled on her shoulder. The pockets in the snug pants of her new mission outfit allowed for nothing larger than a slip of paper, and she had no empty pouches in which to stash him.

The hero and the molerat set out to find the whatever it was. Female, apparently, from Amy's choice of pronoun. But what do you call a blend of two people? Kim didn't have any idea. It was different with animals, especially when Amy blended them to be sort of half-and-half. Even if one was a person, which the demented scientist had been known to do. The teen cringed at a mental picture of Ron with Shego's legs and hips. She shook her head and decided not to think about it for now.

Whatever the new creature was, following it was easy. She had been playing with her plasma, which left a slight whiff of ozone behind. Rufus sniffed and gave directions. At one point, she had apparently been amusing herself by poking holes in the suits of armor along a main hall, melting finger-sized openings in the center of the breastplates.

Kim followed the trail up four flights, until she and Rufus were above ground, on what she would call the second floor, the one above the ground floor. The early afternoon sun beamed in, and where it reached the castle was somewhat cheerful. She walked down a hall and Rufus indicated that the trail led at last through an open door, into what seemed likely to be a sitting room. Light flowed out the door. Hesitating at the door, Kim looked in.

Standing in front of a mirror near the wall, paying no attention to the door, was a naked woman, her skin just a tinge lighter than the pale green Kim associated with Shego. She seemed the same height, but Kim had never seen Shego naked, so it was hard to tell. Her hair was long and dark, laying straight down her back, without the waves that Shego's hair had. This woman seemed perhaps a bit stockier than the trim, centerfold lovely Shego who displayed herself so well in a skin-tight catsuit. She was standing with her legs slightly apart, relaxed, her hands in front of her. As Kim stepped up to stand framed in the doorway, the green woman noticed her in the mirror. A smile split her face and she turned, revealing her hands cupping her breasts.

"Look, KP! Boobs!"


	3. Self-discovery

**Chapter 3: Self Discovery**

* * *

DNAmy stared, shocked, at the slagged cylinder in which I had apparently been formed. "You shouldn't have done that. I'll have to make a new one. They're expensive. The HenchCo stuff just doesn't work. And the software, I'll have to re-calibrate!" She was getting agitated, and the monkeys were beginning to fidget in response.

"Yeah. Don't care." I was watching the monkeys. You can't trust monkeys.

"This is going to take days! I have to get parts. Materials! You have no idea how much all this costs!" She wasn't really looking at me. She seemed to be calculating things in her head.

The monkeys were watching me. They can't trust me, either.

"Amy. Don't care. I'm leaving now." I turned towards one of the doors. I really didn't care where it led. I had full confidence in my ability to handle whatever was on the other side.

"No! You can't! Monkey ninjas! Stop her!" I spun to face the two simians in lab coats. They cowered behind their hands, chattering at each other. Apparently, they were not ninjas. Behind me, the roller door rose noisily, and I whirled to see a dozen or so black-clad monkeys charge into the lab. Okay. These must be the ninjas.

The next couple of minutes were entertaining. If they hadn't involved monkeys, they might even have been fun. As it was, I initially cringed away from the onslaught. I caught myself doing so, and instantly became angry. _I fear nothing!_ The thought flared in my head. The fact that I was obviously afraid of monkeys was infuriating and somewhat irrelevant. My hands lit, deep green flame swirling around them. The first monkey to reach me got a sidekick to the chest that it tried to bat away, and I sent two balls of green fire at the two just behind him. I leapt easily to the top of a lab table, knocking over about eighty-six pieces of glassware, and tossed two more bolts of green. Neither hit a monkey, but both did minor damage to machine cabinets.

I watched myself work as I fought the monkeys. They were pretty poorly trained, I thought, and if I wasn't slowed and weakened by pain I'd have made even shorter work of them. They had no idea how to coordinate an attack. They didn't use the space properly, allowing me free movement. My muscles limbered as I worked, my hands flashing out to block blows, my feet connecting with small, wiry bodies and sending them crashing across the lab. I wasn't really trying to hurt them, at least no more than was required to make them stop attacking me. That was stupid, I thought in my detached state. I could easily fry them, or snap limbs and necks. Instead, I hit them with body shots, or threw them across the room. I realized that I was enjoying the fighting, the use of force and balance, and was frustrated when some of my moves did not work as they should. My body wasn't responding correctly. I could see in my mind the intended action, but the speed and balance just wasn't there.

There were a couple of close calls when I miscalculated. When blocking a punch from one of the furry ninjas, I was slower than I should have been and he was able to turn the punch to a grab. Monkeys are a boatload stronger than they should be, for such little things. His grip hurt, and it caused the pain already in my body to burn more brightly. Before the little monster could improve his stance, I pivoted and swung him into a support pillar. He groaned and dropped. It was the only time during the brief melee that I really wanted to clobber any of them.

The monkeys backed off when they realized that their task was hopeless. I grinned and taunted them. "Here, monkey! Here, banana boys! Come and get your ass-kicking!" I threw some more fireballs, smoking a couple of machines. Amy cringed and scowled, but could do nothing. A couple of the ninjas lurked behind her, waiting.

I still hurt, but my legs felt somewhat better, at least. My arms and shoulders were loose and limber, and felt better when moving than when not. I hopped lightly off the table from which I'd been fighting, and announced, "I think I'll take a walk!" I ignored Amy's spluttering and strolled through the roller door. I didn't care that that's where the monkey ninjas had come from. If there were any left, they would just provide more exercise.

The hall beyond the door was ten feet wide and tiled in white linoleum, as inviting as a hospital basement. A ramp at the end sloped upward to another roller door, and that probably would let me out of the building. I heard some movement in the other direction, however, and turned that way. Down the hall a bit were two large barred doors. Behind each was a large cell, or cage. In the first was a beast a foot taller than me, with the head of an elephant and the body of a grizzly bear. The trunk came through the bars at me and I skipped backwards.

In the next cage was something that looked like a raptor mixed with a bison. If the elebear seemed pointless, this seemed wrong. The beast was lying on its chest, looking up at me, and tried to rise as I went past. It wasn't very successful. Apparently Amy had gotten something wrong, because the forelegs looked birdlike, not strong enough to lift the massive body. The eyes stared unblinking over the hooked beak, and I wondered what would become of the animal. Some things are not meant to be.

I kept going past the cages and took some stairs to the left. A couple of levels up, an oak door let me out onto another broad hall. This one had old woolen carpets on a wooden floor. Portraits hung on one wall, along with a coat of arms and a couple of framed documents in old-fashioned formal cursive. On the opposite wall were arrayed a dozen or so suits of armor. I grinned and let fire swirl on my forefingers, and as I walked down the hall I punched holes in the chest plates. "Die, zombie scum!"

I passed double doors that led into some sort of ballroom along the way, and past that a smaller set that opened into a small library. As I glanced through, I thought some of the books might be valuable. At the end of the hall a flight of stairs led off in each direction, and I arbitrarily turned left and went up that staircase. In all the time since I had left the lab, I had not seen a single person or monkey. The place looked clean and maintained, but nobody was home.

At the top of the stairs I emerged onto a smaller hallway. Doors were open on either side, and sunlight spilled out. I wandered down, looking in on sitting rooms and bedrooms, each with a window letting in the light. Suddenly, I stopped.

Near the wall opposite the door was a tall, freestanding mirror in a frame, and in it I saw a tall, solidly built woman. The image was so unexpected that I thought at first it must be a painting. When I realized it was my reflection, I was fascinated. It had not occurred to me to wonder what I looked like. Now that I saw, it was not what I would have thought. I walked into the room and up to the mirror. I ran my eyes up the image, studying and appreciating, and thinking, _Fuck, I'm hot._

My legs were strong and muscular. I flexed and watched the muscles move under the layer of flesh on my calves. My feet looked maybe a little large, the second toe extending beyond the big toe on each one. I bobbed on the balls of my feet. The walking had lessened the pain in my legs, and it felt good to flex. My thighs were solid, a thin layer of subcutaneous fat over strong muscles. I ran my hands over them, enjoying the pressure of my fingers on the muscles, and the feel of my skin beneath my fingers. I let my hands move up, bypassing the dark brown thatch between them. That would come later.

My skin was a light, very pale green, with freckles of darker green dotting my arms and shoulders. I twisted and saw that they were thick along my upper back. My cheeks were lightly freckled. There were even some freckles on my breasts.

Oh, my breasts. I cupped them with my hands. There was enough of each, from rib to underside of the nipple, to fill my palm with a bit left over. I lifted and squeezed. They didn't hurt at all. They felt wonderful. Hands are designed for them, curved and sized and shaped for the purpose of lifting and holding and caressing them. My areolae were small, about the size of a quarter, puffy and a darker shade of green, almost brown. The nipples were sensitive; I pinched them lightly and nearly swooned. I squeezed harder, and even as it began to hurt I liked the feelings. I went back to cupping them, watching the result in the mirror. As I did so, I saw motion reflected over my shoulder. A pair of green eyes stared at me from a face surrounded by striking red hair. I knew the face instantly. As with Amy, I knew this person without actually remembering her. Unlike Amy, in this case I was happy to see her. I spun, my hands staying on my chest.

"Look, KP! Boobs!"

Her eyes went to my breasts, which I lifted and presented to her, then back to my face. "Ron?"

"Aren't they great?" I pinched the nipples again, tugging them out a little.

"Ron, please." She glanced away from me.

"What's the matter, Princess? Jealous?" I lifted them in my hands and shoved my assets at her. Truthfully, she had nothing to be jealous about. Her boobs weren't as large as mine, but they were primo, nonetheless. Her top was snug, and even though she was wearing a sports bra under it, I could tell that she was just about perfect in the protuberance department.

"Shego!"

"Well, fuck, Princess, which is it? Ron, Shego, what? And what the fuck? Is that a naked mole rat on your shoulder? That's kind of cool, in a totally not-cool sort of way."

The redhead stared at me. The mole rat stared at me. She said, "You don't recognize Rufus?"

"If the rat is Rufus, then no, I don't recognize Rufus." I was kind of bored with the conversation already. I wanted to get back to my boobs.

"Rufus is Ron's pet. More than a pet, really." And I could swear the rat chimed in, "Uh-huh! Uh-huh!"

"Well, that's peachy, Cupcake. I'm glad Ron has a best friend." I took another look over my shoulder, admiring the shape of my leg as I twisted, and the way my ass flexed. I took a step towards the door, and Kimmie positioned herself in the frame.

"Where are you going?"

"Outside. It looks like a beautiful day."

"You're naked!"

"Yep. And fucking sexy. And restless. Let's go out and play." I gave her a grin. "Unless you'd rather stay in and play," I suggested, sweeping my hand towards the nearby overstuffed chair.

Kimmie stayed where she was. I think she might have looked a little sick at my taunt, but maybe it was shock. "We have to go back downstairs to the lab."

I was standing one pace away from her. I considered just kicking her out of the way, but opted to try persuasion. For the moment, anyway. "Why would we do that? I don't want to go to the lab, I don't want to see Amy, and, monkeys!" I shuddered.

"We have to get you back to being Ron and Shego!" She seemed frustrated.

"No, Pumpkin, we don't. We have to go outside so I can stretch, and then we have to get some lunch. Or dinner, or whatever. Think there's a Bueno Nacho nearby? There has to be. Now, would you please get out of the doorway?" I stepped forward, and she stood aside.

"You can't go to Bueno Nacho without clothes," she said as I went past her.

"You know, you're right." I really hadn't thought about it until then. I kept going down the hall. "Let's worry about that after I stretch, okay? I hurt all over, and exercise seems to help." I skipped down the stairs and out the huge front door, onto the lawn.

The sun felt marvelous on my skin. I stretched up to it, letting the light fall along my face and body. I twisted once each way,stretching all the muscles in my back, my arms high above my head, my breasts high and proud. Kim came out behind me as I bent forward and touched my toes, my legs two shoulder widths apart, my hands going from one ankle to the other. I saw her from between my legs as she stopped abruptly, staring at my ass and blushing. I smirked to myself, but decided to ignore her.

The lawn had a very gentle slope away from the huge stone manor house from which we had just emerged. I stood, shaking out my shoulders and arms, then pulled my left hand back, to just in front of my waist on that side, and pressed my right fist into the palm. I raised my hands to my shoulders, made a fist with each, and brought them down to waist high, in front. From there, I flowed into a set of moves that involved kicks, punches and strikes, and rapid transitions from one low stance to another. I leapt sideways and struck along my leg with a palm, a deep yell erupting from my chest, and rotated immediately into a block and punch in the opposite direction. I continued for probably a minute and a half. At the end, I pulled up into a stance, and for some reason bowed. I realized that Kimmie was staring at me.

"Yeah, that wasn't very good, was it? My balance feels off, and my moves were too stiff." I was less sore after the effort, though, and I shook my arms in preparation for another run through.

"I've seen better, but it was pretty good. It's a little different than the version I know."

"Version of what, Pumpkin?" I asked absently.

"Empi. The kata you just did. It's a standard Shotokan form."

"Hmm." I wasn't really listening. I went back into the moves, letting my muscles take me, feeling the wrongness and working through it. The sense was wrong, my muscles too tight. The fluidity that should have been there in all of my moves was missing. Having breasts didn't help. I was glad they weren't any larger; they would have completely screwed my balance. And they didn't like being whanged around without support. They started to ache on the second run.

Kim watched as I went through the form five times. She alternated her attention between me and some sort of glorified cell phone. She was speaking in a low voice, barely audible, but I wasn't interested anyway. I pulled up at the end of the fifth run, pleasantly tired, a fine sheen of perspiration on me despite the fairly cool air. The pain in my body, so deep only a couple of hours ago, was almost gone. I turned toward the big double doors.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm hungry. I'm going to find some food. Hopefully something other than bananas."

"Monkeys don't just eat bananas. And Amy must have food for herself."

"Whatever. Let's go find some." I led the way back into the house. I had no trouble finding my way back to the lab.

Amy did indeed have plenty of food, all of it vegetarian. Bread and fruit, which apparently the monkeys ate, as well. Amy, Kim, and I sat a table in a small room off the lab. They watched me eat. I ate. The mole rat said, "Cheese?" Amy found some cheese. The mole rat ate.

Kim asked Amy, "How long will it take to repair your machine?"

"The zipper? I don't know. She only damaged the central chamber. I can fix that in a couple of days, unless the sensors are ruined. Then I might have to get new ones, and that could take a few more days."

I stared at them. "Look, dipshits. You can repair the machine if you want. But I'm not getting in it. I don't want to, and I'm betting you can't make me." I waved a hand, lightly glowing with green flame.

Kim was looking frustrated. "But we have to get you back to being Ron and Shego!"

"No, we don't. How many times do I have to tell you, Pumpkin? I'm me. I don't know who these people are, or were, but I'm me now, and I don't want to die so you can have this Ron guy back. Or is it the Shego chick you're really interested in?"

Kim looked stunned, and Amy looked confused. "But, I mean, you are them. You can't..." Kimmie trailed off.

"Yeah, so? If I'm them, then here they are. And if I'm not, then you want to kill me to get them back. Fuck you, and fuck you twice again."

"I don't want to kill anybody! I just want..." Kim went silent as she thought about it. "I just want my friend back," she finished quietly.

She looked so miserable that it dampened my anger. "Look, Precious. I'm sorry. But you know you can't have that. Even if I did get in that machine, do you think that you'd get him back? I don't remember him at all. I don't remember you, for that matter. What would it mean to have the guy back, if he doesn't even remember you?"

"Well, maybe he would remember me!"

"And maybe he wouldn't! And it doesn't matter, because I'm not getting into that thing!" My hands were waving in frustration.

"What's your name?" Amy's eyes had been back-and-forthing from Kim to me during our exchange, and we were both surprised when she spoke.

"Hunh?" I hadn't even thought about it. When there's only two or three people around, 'me', 'you', and 'her' is pretty much all you need.

"What's your name? What do we call you?" Amy repeated. Kim looked surprised; it probably hadn't occurred to her, either.

I should have spent more time thinking, but I snarked an answer. "Call me Sheryl. The first sound from 'Shego', the 'arrr' from 'Ron', and 'ill' for how all this talk of killing me makes me feel."

"I don't want to kill-" Kim started, but Amy interrupted her. "Okay. Sheryl." She was calm, thinking about other things. She turned to Kim. "It will take a few days to fix the zipper, and I can't start until my next royalty check, anyway. I don't have any money until then."

"Royalty check?"

"Well, sure. How do you think I afford this?" Amy was politely puzzled at Kim's confusion. "I invented some of the genetic tests for things like breast cancer. Those nice people at Columbia sell it for me, and send me a check every month."

I turned to Kim. "Well, Princess, it looks like I get at least few days before you can try to take me apart, anyway. What do we do until then?"


	4. Middleton

**Chapter 4: Middleton**

* * *

Naturally, they went to Middleton.

Amy stayed at Fiske Manor, planning to rebuild the zipper. Kim was of two minds about that. On the one hand, Amy had kidnapped Ron and drugged Shego and blended them to create Sheryl. For that, she should go to jail, perhaps several times over. On the other hand, there was no proof of any of that, and if she were in jail, she would not be doing anything to help get Ron back. And nobody else could. Pragmatism warred with idealism. Idealism lost big.

Their ride turned out to be a Royal Air Force Land Rover, with a driver and an officer. They brought the clothes that Sheryl had requested, and chivalrously turned their backs as she donned them. The ride to the airfield was completed in near silence, the only sounds Sheryl's chewing and gulping as she chomped through the Naco Grande that had been supplied for her. Kim much more quietly nibbled on a salad, the only Bueno Nacho offering that she found palatable.

"Thanks for the lift, Leftenant Smytherson!" Kim chirped as they bounced from the vehicle.

"Least we could do after you saved young Masterson when his rudder jammed."

"Anyone would have dropped onto that trainer and freed it. It was easy with the laser lipstick to cut through that wire tangled in the mechanism. No big." Everybody waved, and the two women boarded the Global Parcel Express cargo flight back to Middleton airfield.

Sheryl mostly slept for the eleven hours of the flight. Kim spent much of her time talking to Wade over the Kimmunicator. She scanned the green woman with every instrument built into the tiny device, and the genius ran the results through dozens of programs, including two that he wrote on the fly.

"I can't tell you a whole lot, Kim. Sheryl's DNA is definitely a combination of Ron and Shego. At least, there's some Ron there, and I assume everything else is Shego. We don't have any samples of her DNA to work from.

"I don't know why she doesn't remember you. Memories aren't really handled in DNA, so it would make sense if she was just a blank slate. But she oviously remembers some things. I mean, she knows English, and that's not genetic. And she recognized you, and Amy, but says she doesn't remember ever meeting you. I just don't know. I'll have to learn a lot more about Amy's machine to figure out what happened."

"She said that she hurt a lot when she woke up."

"I think that might have been a mismatch between her muscle memory and her actual muscles. You said she could do martial arts forms, even though she didn't remember taking any classes. So that's something that got mapped in. But her body is different than when she learned it." The boy shrugged. "I don't know. I'm working on it. I'll talk to Amy and see what I can find out."

With nothing left to do, Kim grabbed a few hours of sleep.

 _~o~o~o~_

Global Justice was waiting for the aircraft when it touched down. The two women followed the captain out of the plane, into the terminal, and came face to disapproving face with a tall man standing ramrod straight in a blue uniform. His gaze swept both of them.

"Hello, Will. Is Dr. Director here?" The woman with the eyepatch wasn't visible, but that meant nothing.

"Kimberly. And... What is her name?"

"I'm Sheryl," the woman in question pleasantly replied. Wearing a peasant skirt and loose blouse, she looked little like the catsuited villainess Du expected. Had it not been for the pale tinted skin, he might not have believed the story he had been given. After years of association with Kim and her misadventures, however, the agent had ceased to discount anything as impossible.

"Hello. If you will come with me, I'll take you to Global Justice headquarters." Agent Du turned to lead.

"Uh, no. Why would we want to go with you? Who is this guy, Kim?"

Kim had no time to reply. "I am Special Agent William Du of Global Justice. Now, if you will come with me..." he waited, obviously expecting no argument.

"Yeah, no. Ain't gonna happen. I don't know you, I don't like you, and I need to get some underwear. Oh, shit." She turned back to Kim. "I don't have any money. Do you have some I can borrow?"

"I have some. But how are you going to pay it back?"

"Huh. That's a good question. Do you suppose I can use whatsername's money? She did have some money, right? I'm pretty sure one of me had money, but it's hard to separate things. Feels like it was her, though."

"Ladies! We need to get going! Come with me!"

Sheryl ignored him. "I mean, if I'm her, I should be able to use her money, right?"

"I guess. But then you'd also have to take responsibility for her crimes, wouldn't you?"

"I don't know. I mean, I didn't actually do anything. Was this Ron guy a criminal?"

"Of course not! Ron was the sweetest-"

"Yeah, yeah. Okay. So if I'm also him, and he shouldn't have to pay for crimes he didn't commit, then I shouldn't have to, right?"

"Miss Possible! I must insist-"

"You can't have it both ways, Sheryl! You can't have both Shego's money and Ron's didn't-do-it-ness. Or whatever."

"Okay, fine! So how do I get money? How do you get money?"

"I work at Club Banana. And babysitting. I do a lot of babysitting. Not as much as I used to, of course." Kim led as the two women made their way to the front of the small cargo terminal.

"Club Banana? I know about Club Banana. I know about babysitting, too, and no fucking way with the babysitting."

"Ladies, please!"

"So, do you think I could work at Club Banana? Just temporary, of course. Until I figure something out."

"I don't know. I could ask, I guess."

"Hello, Miss Possible. Coming back from a mission?" They had reached the Customs desk. Kim nodded. Following a completely illegal and totally unofficial policy of the local office, the agent on duty waved Kim through. Nobody wanted to see a _Hundreds die as teen hero Kim Possible held up at local Customs_ story in the news. Or, _Kim Possible arrested for saving lives without a visa_. The officer looked curiously at Sheryl. She had seen Kim with Ron, but never with anyone else. "Umm, not sure here."

"She's with me, Officer Dorfmann." The officer waved Sheryl through the gate.

"Officer! She doesn't have a passport!"

"You want me to arrest Kim Possible for not having a passport?"

"No! I want you to arrest _her_ for not having a passport!"

"Uh, ma'am? Do you have a passport?"

"I've only been here for a day! Of course I don't have a passport."

"You've been here for a day? But you just got here."

"Not here, here! Here, like on Earth here!"

"You're not from Earth?"

"Of course I'm from Earth! I was born on Earth. Well, not born, really, kind of..."

Sheryl looked desperately at Kim. Officer Dorfmann looked desperately at Kim. Kim shrugged. Will Du glowered.

"Hey, Will. How about Sheryl and I go see Dr. Director in a couple of days, okay? It's been a really long day for us, and we have to go see the Stoppables." Kim took Sheryl's hand and began walking toward the exit. "I'll talk to Dr. Director tomorrow. Promise." The two women strode rapidly away. Will attempted to follow. Officer Dorfmann pressed the button that locked the customs gate.

"Sir? I'll need to see some I.D., please."

 _~o~o~o~_

"So, who are the Stoppables?"

"Ron's parents. And his little sister. She's adopted."

"Stoppable? Half of me has the last name Stoppable? I'm a lot of things, Cupcake. I'm smart, and I'm sexy, and seriously, savagely, stupendous. But I am not, repeat not, stoppable."

"Hush!" The women were walking up the steps to the Stoppable house. As Kim reached to ring the bell, the door opened, and Ron's mother looked out anxiously. Scanning the walk, she asked, "Where's Ron? Did you find Ron?"

"Kind of, Mrs. Stoppable. Um..."

Sheryl stepped up, arms open wide. "Hi, Mom!" Mrs. Stoppable recoiled in shock.

"Sheryl!"

"What, Kimmie?"

"A little abrupt, don't you think?"

"What, you were going to sneak up on it? 'How about this weather, Mrs. Stoppable? Found any new cookie recipes? Your son was genetically blended with some green woman and this is what came out. Look, a squirrel!'"

"Well, I mean, I sort of think-"

"Look, it's done. Okay? She knows. Hi, Mom. A crazy mad genetic scientist blended your son Ron and a woman named Shego, and I'm what happened. I don't remember anything, I don't recognize you, and that guy with the paper walking up behind you is probably your husband, and I don't recognize him, either. Sorry about that."

"Ron?"

"Partially." Sheryl sighed. "Mrs. Stoppable. Mr. Stoppable," she added as Ron's father came up alongside his wife. "I really don't think there's a good way to say it. If there was, I'd try. But it's pretty much what I said. Ron is part of me, but so is this woman Shego." Her arms lifted helplessly. "I really don't know what else to say."

"Kim? Won't you and, ah, Sheryl come inside for a bit?" Mrs. Stoppable opened the door fully and stepped back to allow them in.

The two followed Ron's parents to the living room, where Mr. Stoppable took a seat in an armchair, his wife in a rocker, and the others on the couch. A little Japanese girl stopped playing with blocks and watched them as they came in. After they were settled, she walked up to Sheryl and gazed intently into her eyes. The woman found herself unable to look away. Kim spoke up.

"This is Hana. She's Ron's adopted little sister."

The toddler locked eyes with Sheryl for a few more seconds. Her eyes seemed to flare with blue fire, and only dimmed back to near-black when she spoke. "Wonnie." It was a statement. Most attention was on the child, so only Kim noted it when Sheryl's eyes flickered with a matching blue light. Sheryl shook her head, startled.

"Uhh, yeah. That was freakish."

Mrs. Stoppable smiled awkwardly. "Hana can be a little... off-putting. But she's absolutely adorable. Most of the time." The little girl herself, having delivered her pronouncement, went back to her blocks.

Mr. Stoppable considered the woman facing him. "So you're both Ron and this woman Shego."

"Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I don't have any reason to think otherwise. Amy's a lot of things, but I guess I've never thought of her as a liar."

Kim seconded that. "Yeah, she's crazy, but not evil." At a questioning look from Mrs. Stoppable, she explained, "I mean, not 'take over the world' evil. She's totally 'turn two people into one for some reason only she can figure out' evil."

"So, 'making one person out of two people who probably did not want that to happen' is just a little evil? But lying is a big evil?"

"It sounds kind of silly when you put it that way."

Sheryl jumped in. "The thing is, uh, Mom? Should I call you Mom? You're only Mom to half of me, but I guess I can call you Mom."

Mr. Stoppable answered. "It seems somewhat unusual to hear a woman older than Ron calling Mrs. Stoppable 'Mom'. Since we have no daughters. Except Hana, who is not green."

Mrs. Stoppable looked relieved to have had the choice made for her.

"So, anyway, Mrs. Stoppable, Kimmie here thought you should know what happened to Ron. And meet me, since I'm him, sort of."

"How do I get my Ron back?" the distraught mother asked.

"Oh fuck! Not you, too!" At a sharp glance from Kim, Sheryl continued more calmly. "Sorry. Um, you don't. I'm it. You see-"

"To get Ron back, we have to split you back into him and Shego. And that means you stop existing. And you want to exist.'

"Uh, yeah, that's right, Mr. Stoppable. You seem kind of calm about it."

"I'm an actuary."

Pause.

Kim spoke up brightly. "Well, we can talk about all that later, I guess. It's been a long day. I think I should take Sheryl to my house and get some sleep. I just wanted to come by and let you know that, uhh..."

Mrs. Stoppable replied. "Thank you, Kim. And, Sheryl, I guess. Um."

"I get it. You don't know what to say, or what to think. You want Ron, and I'm not really him, but you can't quite bring yourself to say that you want me to die so that you can have him back. No problem. Kim's already said it for you."

 _~o~o~o~_

As Hana made her pronouncement, and Sheryl's eyes flickered, an old man on a mountain top in Japan paused in his speech, frowned slightly, and continued.

"What is it, Sensei?"

The old man considered what he should reveal to the young ninja with whom he spoke. "The Han, and a new feeling. There is a presence in the Mystical Monkey Power that I have not felt before. With time, things shall likely become clear."

 _~o~o~o~_

Several thousand miles away, in laboratory in Russia, a disgraced ninja stood silent. He did not know or care why he had been asked to add a single drop of fluid to a specific test tube in this particular lab. He was a ninja, one of the very best in the world, and this is what he did. He waited, absorbing the feelings and sounds of the building, his subconscious building a map of the sensors and traps nearby.

Fukushima had, over the past few years, trained himself to be aware of the Mystical Monkey Power. Though he did not wield it himself, he knew himself to be the rightful heir to the Power. He felt this faint tremor as the Power flickered between the Han and a new player. The Power felt different, as though mixed with something, but the senses of the ninja were not so fine as to be able to tell what it was.

 _~o~o~o~_

From the Stoppables, the hero and her bemused companion proceeded to the Possible house.

"Mom? Dad? This is Sheryl. I told her she could stay in the guest room for a while."

There was surprisingly little conversation. The Doctors Possible were far too familiar with Kim's adventures to be surprised even by this, and they trusted her to keep danger away from her home. Anne Possible looked up from her glass of wine and welcomed Sheryl. James looked up from a copy of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets.

"Hey, Kimmie-cub. Did you have dinner?"

"No, Dad. Nothing since this morning. It's been a ferociously hectic day."

Her mother chimed in. "There are leftovers in the fridge, honey."

After ensuring that their daughter and her guest were, or would be, fed, the doctors went back to their pursuits. The two young women proceeded to the kitchen, where they foraged for dinner. Tired and hungry, they ate in near silence. The beasts within satiated for the night, Kim led the way upstairs.

"Towels are in the cupboard inside the door. My mom is a little taller than me. I'll get a robe from her closet for you. And maybe you can wear a set of her pajamas."

"I'm pretty sure I'm okay sleeping nude, Kimmie."

The teenager blushed a little. "Okay. The bath is this way. You take the first shower, and then I'll grab one."

Sheryl couldn't pass up the opportunity. "You look tired, Pumpkin. Let's take our showers together so we can get to bed sooner."

The redhead growled in response. "Give it a rest, Sheryl. Just take a quick shower, okay? If you feel half as grimy as I do, you need one."

"I do feel pretty gross. I haven't had a shower in, well, I guess I've never had a shower. Kind of hard to realize I've only been alive for a day."

"Yeah, fine." Kim wasn't feeling inclined to be understanding. "Soap is in the caddy under the showerhead." A thought struck her. "Do you even know how to use a shower?"

"Yeah, I do. I mean, I'm pretty sure. You could always help." The woman arched her eyebrows suggestively.

"Just take your shower. And make it quick. I need one after you." Kim closed the door, the quickly re-opened it and leaned in. "Wait until tomorrow to wash your hair, okay? Do you need help to put it up?"

The brunette pulled her hair back and ran her fingers through it. After a couple of false starts, she twisted it into a loose rope and wound it into a bun. "I really don't know what I just did, but it seems to work. Do you have a thin towel or something?" After being provided with a cloth, Sheryl tied it around her head. "That'll do."

Kim stepped back out of the bath and waited. And waited. After fifteen minutes, she cracked the door open and yelled through the steam, "Are you about done?"

The water stopped running. After a few seconds, Sheryl's voice came from inside.

"Uh, I got some soap in my, um..." She had the grace to sound embarrassed.

"What? How did you get soap in your 'um'?"

The door opened fully, and Sheryl stood in her borrowed robe.

"How do you think? I was washing, and it felt really good, and I did it some more, and it felt even better, and-"

"Enough. I get it. You'll be fine. It's mild soap. Two things. One, rinse hands first. Second, isn't it kind of impolite to do that while somebody is waiting for the shower?"

"I didn't plan to! It just felt so good. I mean, how do you stop?"

The question gave Kim pause. Come to think of it, it _was_ kind of hard to stop.

"Just don't get started. I mean, time and place, huh? And the shower isn't-" She had to stop, remembering a rather exuberant afternoon interlude after a mission in Paris, in a hotel suite with a very versatile shower wand. "At least, when someone is waiting. Do it in bed."

Sheryl arched her brows again. "If you say so, Kimmie."

The teenager heaved an exasperated sigh. "Just go to bed, okay? I'll see you in the morning. My folks will be at the breakfast table around eight. I might sleep in for a while, myself." She closed the bathroom door firmly behind her. Sheryl shrugged and went to bed.

Kim knocked on the guest room door at two in the morning.

"What?"

"If you have to do that all night, could you try to be quiet? I don't want to have to explain it to the Tweebs."


	5. Drakken

**Chapter 5: Drakken  
**

* * *

Kim can be a real tight-ass about some things. So I moan a little when I come. Who doesn't? You'd have thought I was screaming the whole house down. Fuck her.

And while we're at it, fuck mornings. I woke up with the sun leaking around the shade, cheerful "we're up and happy and you should be, too!" noises from elsewhere in the house, and thighs that were a little sore from a half-dozen explorations of just how good I could make myself feel. I was short of sleep, too.

I staggered down to the breakfast table at seven thirty on the first morning of my life, wanting coffee and solitude. I was barefoot and wearing the robe that Kimmie had loaned me. I stumbled into the kitchen to find the kind of heart-warming family scene that inspired Norman Rockwell's more insipid creations. Anne Possible was looking professional as all hell, probably gearing up for a day of saving lives at sixty thousand dollars a pop. James Possible was wearing a white shirt and boring tie, reading the paper and trying to sip from an empty coffee mug. And the Tweebs were staring at me like they hoped the robe would go transparent at any moment.

One of the kids spoke up. "Are you all right?"

"Whaa?" I hadn't processed the question before the other joined in.

"You sounded like something hurt-"

"Or you were having nightmares-"

"And you're limping this morning."

"Now, boys." Anne chided them. "I'm sure that Sheryl is fine. And if she isn't, it's still none of your business." She looked meaningfully at me. "Is there anything you need to talk to me about? I am a doctor, remember."

"Uh, no, I don't think so." Sure, she was a doctor and all, but what was I gonna say? I hurt myself jilling off?

Luckily, Kim chose that moment to come shambling into the kitchen. She looked a little bleary, and I was delighted to see that she isn't Little Miss Chipper first thing in the morning, any more than I am. She glared at me for a second, then hit the cabinet for a Toaster Tart. Rufus rode her shoulder, and nobody batted an eye as he jumped to the counter. Kim found him some cheese in the refrigerator, and carried him to the table.

Breakfast went on pretty much in silence. Kim asked her mother if I could borrow some clothes from her, since she and I were the same height, and without missing a beat she agreed. The two Doctors Possible left for their places of business, taking the Tweebs with them. I don't know where they were being taken. Kim ate another Toaster Tart. Rufus asked for more cheese.

After Kim had another sugar slug and a glass of milk, and Rufus ran out of cheese, we went upstairs to shower and get dressed. It turned out that Anne Possible was as tall as me, but not as big around the hips. Nor as well endowed above. So I wound up wearing sweat pants, sweat shirt, and nothing underneath. I didn't particularly mind going commando, but it was past time for me to get some underwear.

Once we were both decent, Kim called Wade. He did not have good news.

"I talked with Amy, and she really doesn't know how all the mental stuff works. She mostly just deals with the biology side of things. The memory stuff is not well understood. Actually, memory is not well understood by anybody. We know there are some physical manifestations, and we kind of know a little about what they are, but nothing in detail.

"Anyway, like I said yesterday, memory isn't in the DNA. If it were, you'd be born with memories, and you aren't. If the machine were just Amy's work, Sheryl would have no memories at all. Amy really doesn't usually care about that stuff. She's just creating cuddlebuddies, and they don't need memories. But she needed Sheryl to have more of Shego and Ron than just the DNA. Well, more of Ron, anyway. She just wanted her to have Shego's glow."

"So what did she do?"

"She bought stuff from HenchCo. Her new machine does deep cell analysis, and that's why Sheryl has muscle memory and knowledge. But Amy doesn't know how it works."

"Can you figure it out, Wade?"

The kid kind of looked at her, surprised. "Maybe, if I had a lot of time and I could do experiments. I mean, I don't know a lot yet. Remember I only had a couple of hours to talk to Amy yesterday. It's afternoon there now, but I just got up a few hours ago. Anyway, my guess is that she doesn't know much. And it's kind of hard to figure out what a mad science device does just by looking at it. And experiments would be kind of unethical."

"So we need to talk to Jack Hench?" Another name I knew, but didn't really remember. I had a list of facts at hand, but no context. Kim didn't seem happy about talking to him, which went well with what I knew about him.

"I think we might be able to skip Hench. Because the only place he could have gotten that tech would have been Drakken."

Now, there was a name I remembered well. It even had a face to go with it. And a lot of mixed feelings. Clearly, both Shego and Ron had had dealings with Drakken. I didn't understand why there didn't seem to be much knowledge to go with it. Some, but not a lot.

"Drakken?"

"Yeah. Remember his brain switch device? Private Dobbs and the Neutronolyzer?" 'Neutronolyzer' meant something to me, but it mapped to "big machine that Drakken doesn't understand". Not useful.

The memory clearly pained Kim. She glanced at me. "Yes, I remember. You think Hench bought the brain switch tech from Drakken."

"Yeah. Remember when Rufus and Mr. Barkin were blended? When you got them unzipped, Barkin had his memories. That's because her machine did a full genetic and cellular copy, so the new DNA could be generated. And it was stored, so that when Barkin was re-created, his brain was re-flashed with the copied information. That stuff came from Hench, and I think he got it from Drakken, because it was just like his device."

I cut in. "Makes sense. Drakken would sell or trade with Jack when he needed something and was short of cash." Now, how did I know that? Because Shego had worked for Drakken. And somehow I knew that, too. Maybe the knowledge I had just needed a trigger?

Kim looked at me suspiciously. "What? I remember the guy. Blue? Ponytail? Big ideas, little hands? That guy?"

Kim was still looking darkly at me. "Yeah. That guy."

Wade cut in. "Anyway, since the original version of the brain scan held a copy, I'm pretty sure this one will, too. Amy did promise to split Sheryl back apart if she rescued Monkey Fist."

Light dawned. "You're still thinking about killing me, aren't you?"

Kim had the grace to look abashed. Wade lacked the social skills necessary for that. "Even without that, the tech is fascinating. We should learn as much as we can. And we need to know how your memory is structured, and knowledge. Why you know what you don't, and don't what you don't."

I bought that, from him. He was so scientific that he'd take notes at his own funeral. And something else had occurred to me, anyway. So I piped up, "Okay, we go see Drakken. We ask questions. We learn stuff." I think Kim felt better, now that she had a plan.

 _~o~o~o~_

Finding Drakken's lair wasn't much of a chore. It turned out that Wade had a list of likely locations, and a couple of them sounded right to me. We went to the closest one, only an hour outside of Middleton. And there he was.

It isn't like we just wandered right in, of course. First, there was getting into the place. For some reason, I thought we were going to go in through the air vents. But Kim said that was only for sneaking in. We didn't care about sneaking in this time.

I asked why not as I checked the drawstring on my sweat pants.

"We just want to talk to him. And he's not up to anything right now, so we don't have to stop him. And, well, he doesn't have Shego. She was the only real problem, anyway."

"So, what, we're just going to knock on the door?"

"Not quite."

The 'not quite' was finding the door. This lair was built into the side of a mountain, which seems to be pretty popular. And it had a disguised door, which is really hard to do because the doors have to be really big, because big stuff has to go through them, and that stuff is often really heavy and on trucks, so there's effectively a road disappearing into the side of a mountain, which is about as inconspicuous as a beard at a Girl Scout meeting. So we pretty much followed the ruts to the door, and Wade hacked the wireless lock in about thirty seconds.

"They all use the same frequencies," he explained. "And the passwords are always simple, because henches have to remember them. And henches are usually, ahh..."

"Dumb as a box of rocks," I finished for him. This, too, was something I knew.

"Yeah. So I tried 'Drakken', and it worked."

The door retracted a couple of feet and started to rise, leaving an opening about twelve feet wide and ten feet high in front of us. We walked in, big as life, and were through the garage into the halls to the labs before anybody noticed. Or something noticed, because alarms went off.

"Intruders! Intruders!" blared from unseen speakers, and about eight guys in maroon jumpsuits came running down the hall. They turned a corner about twenty feet away, and pulled up short when they saw us. "Kim Possible! Oh, fu-"

"Hey guys, we just want to-" Kim began, but she was overridden by the speakers.

"Stop them!"

The guys all had stun rods, which hurt like blazes when they zap you, and of course are six foot long metal sticks, which hurt anyway. I felt a momentary surge of terror, and turned to Kim. "KP!"

"Distract them! I'll find Drakken." The hall was twelve feet wide, and there were smaller side halls, and she disappeared into one of them. I knew Wade was using some kind of remote sensing to map the place as we went, but that thought took eighteenth place to the realization that eight guys with stun rods were looking relieved that they only had me to fight. Oh well.

"On it, KP!" I charged forward, and the sweat pants fell around my ankles. I sprawled awkwardly onto the floor, right in front of the astounded henches.

Apparently, a nearly naked woman on the floor is not considered very threatening by the average hench. I kicked off my shoes and pants and stood up, the sweatshirt falling low enough to almost conceal the unruly curls at my crotch. The guy in front of me was smirking, and I punched him in the mouth. He fell on his ass. I enjoyed that so much that I did it to next guy. He fell on his ass too, and the battle was on.

It wasn't much of a contest. I was strong and fast and obviously knew what I was doing. At least, my body did, because whenever one of them grabbed for me, I wasn't there, and when I wanted to hit them, I did. And they underestimated me badly. I jumped over low swings with the stun rods, ducked under high ones, and blocked the ones I didn't dodge. I blocked punches and returned kicks that staggered the doofuses.

As when fighting the monkeys the day before, things felt a little off, though not as badly. Some of my attempts didn't work quite right. I got hit a couple of times I shouldn't have. Still, it took all of about ninety seconds to drop all eight of them. And it was fun. I don't know why I'd been afraid at first; maybe I just didn't realize how good I actually am. I was energized and ready for more when the brief skirmish was over. I dashed down the hall, zipped around a corner, and took a couple of other turns to find myself in the typical oversized central control room. Kim was battling four henches there, and I stopped to watch her work.

She was beyond good. She was more graceful than I had been, dodging rather than blocking. Her strikes were more precise. I used more brute strength than she did. She moved in ways human beings are not supposed to be able to move, and faster than I would have thought possible. Come to think of it, so did I. And why didn't it surprise me?

She clobbered the four of them in like fourteen seconds, and we were left with Drakken. "Kim Possible! You think you're all that! But you're... Who's that?" He gaped at me, and Kim turned to see me. She blushed, and I remembered that I was naked from the waist down.

"Hi. I'm Sheryl." I waved. "We have some questions."

"I don't answer questions!" That was just silly. He was being annoying for the sake of being annoying. I understood the impulse, but didn't have patience for it.

"Yeah, you do. First of all, you like showing off how brilliant you are. And you are occasionally brilliant, I'll give you that. Second, if you don't, I'll put a flaming fist so far down your throat you'll get a pre-cauterized tonsillectomy." I lit up a hand for emphasis.

"Shego?"

"Kind of." I got closer, and he could see that I wasn't Shego, but that I did have pale green skin and black hair. To give him credit, he figured things out faster than anyone had so far.

"I told Shego not to work for Amy. But no, she wouldn't listen. She never listened to me. I gave her advice, I tried to help, but she always knew better..."

"Yeah, yeah," I interrupted. "Lets say for the sake of argument that you were actually right for once. And let's say for argument that Shego got blended with somebody else and here I am. We want to know why I remember some things and not others, and like that." Although I didn't really care about any of that.

Drakken did. His chest puffed up and he got all professorial and condescending and bombastic and a thesaurus full of other words meaning "long-winded asshole". He launched into an explanation involving probabilities and valences and stuff that had Kim's Nerdlinger in ecstasy and me bored stupid in six seconds flat. I told Kim I'd be back in a few minutes and took off.

I was looking for Shego's rooms. I knew she'd have a suite in the lair somewhere, and I figured that maybe I had some knowledge that would help find it. I did. I turned away from the hall leading to the dormitory, and went down one that led to two suites of rooms. One door had "Doctor Drakken" in flowery gold script on it. One had "Go Away" in plain, dark green letters.

Drakken's door had a keypad lock. Shego's had a smooth hemisphere sticking out of the wall next to it. I put my hand on it and brought up a little bit of flame, and the door slid open. I strolled in and found a computer sitting on a desk in the front room. I hit the power button and looked around as it whirred to life.

The room was stark and neat. It didn't feel like a place I would like. There was a single abstract painting on the wall, green and black swirls on a beige background, unsigned. The walls were off-white. The furniture consisted of a single armchair with a side table next to it, and a reading lamp. It looked like the outer office at a brokerage firm. The only things on the desk other than the computer were two small picture frames. One held a picture of a younger Kim in a cheerleading outfit. It looked like a posed shot, probably from the high school newsletter or something, and had probably been taken a couple of years before. The other held a picture of Kim wearing a snug purple top and black slacks, a grappling gun holstered on her thigh. The same outfit she'd been wearing when I first met her. She looked angry and poised for action. When I saw it, I knew the picture was a still from a surveillance camera, taken during some lair invasion.

The computer screen opened with a password prompt, and I sat down at it. Sure enough, I knew the password. I quickly typed "KPSexyHot", hit enter, and got told it was the wrong password. Well, shit.

I tried again, with "Kiss Punchable". That worked, and would have made me wonder about Shego, but I was already pretty sure about Shego. The screen background was a still grab of Kim flying across a room. A woman in black and green was rocked back on her left leg, her right fully extended, and it was obvious she had just sidekicked the redhead. She was turned away from the camera, but she had a fine ass and great hair. It had to be Shego.

I knew where to look in the file system, and I rapidly pulled up Shego's financials. I pulled a memo pad from the desk drawer and quickly jotted down two account numbers and the associated bank information.

I wanted to know a little more about this woman. I went into the next room, the bedroom. There was a double bed with bookcase headboard, a sixty-inch television mounted on the opposite wall, a nightstand, and another armchair. Two low bookshelves stood against a wall, mostly empty. There were a few volumes about law enforcement, a couple of recent issues of fashion magazines, and two books on medieval church history. A video player sat atop one of the bookcases. The remote was on the bedside table. I was just opening the nightstand drawer when I heard a sound behind me. Kim stood in the bedroom door, watching me.

"What?"

She looked around the room. "What are you doing in here?"

"It's sort of my room, isn't it? Why shouldn't I be here? You, on the other hand..." I let the sentence trail off.

She looked uncomfortable. "Yeah. I guess I forget you're kind of Shego. Or something." She groped for a distraction. "What's that," gesturing at the open drawer.

I glanced in and grinned. "Well, this," I said, holding up a ribbed plastic wand about eight inches long and half an inch in diameter, "goes up your-"

"Stop!" Her hands were literally over her ears. "I don't need to know this."

I pulled out a phallic vibrator. "And this...is a remote for the TV and video," I told her, sweeping that item from the tabletop. I pointed it across the room and thumbed a few buttons. A black and white video of Kim and Shego fighting began playing. I hit the menu button, and a listing of dates appeared. I chose one at random, and another fight popped up, this one in color, on what looked like a catwalk.

"Best I can tell, Shego liked to jill off watching the two of you fight."

"Sheryl!" She snapped at me, but more of her attention was on the screen. "Just because she had that thing, and watched us fight, doesn't mean she did it at the same time." My smirk died as I realized that she was barely aware of me now, focused as she was on the fighting. Her eyes moved with the action, probably critiquing each move.

I also realized that my statement, intended as pure snark, felt right. I was watching the screen as well, and I could see the grace and beauty of both women. I wasn't aroused by it, the intensity and danger was too much for that, but maybe Shego would have found that part of the charm. Had it been just Kim, moving that way, I might have responded. I clicked off the television and Kim turned her attention back to me.

"What's up, Cupcake? Lecture time over?"

"Yes. Let's get back to the control room. There isn't really much to say, but Wade and Drakken can fill you in."

I didn't really understand all the details of what I was told when we got back. Essentially, the brain machine would copy knowledge that didn't conflict with knowledge from the other person. So I remembered stuff about mole rats because Ron knew about mole rats. And I remembered stuff that Shego knew, if it didn't conflict. I knew Kim, because both Ron and Shego knew Kim.

"But memories require context. And that would require knowledge that conflicts. So what you have is knowledge without context."

"That's why I recognized Amy, and I knew about her, but I didn't really feel like I knew her personally?"

"Yes." Wade was in full 'explain physics to the cavegirl' mode. "So you should at least recognize anybody that either Shego or Ron knew. And if they both knew somebody, you might have more background."

"So how come I didn't recognize Ron's parents? Or the little sister?"

Drakken cut in for this. "Families come with too much context. The Extended Memory and Knowledge Synthesis and Combinationizer would have decided that you couldn't have two sets of people with 'Mom' and 'Dad' tags, so it dropped both."

Uh-huh.

"So, anyway," continued the nerdlinger, "You know most of what either Ron or Shego knew, but not everything, and anything that conflicted you might not know at all, and stuff that reinforced, well, I don't know."

"But they both knew Drakken. Shego knew him pretty well. Why don't I remember him better? I remember you better than him, and Shego probably didn't know you at all."

"Conflicting knowledge. They knew him in very different ways, so... You know what? I don't know." The kid was obviously frustrated by that. He'd said "I don't know" twice in a few seconds. It was probably a record for him.

Drakken added, "I was like an evil father to Shego, but the buffoon only knew me as a brilliant mad scientist. So naturally there are conflicts." I saw Kim's eyes rolling. Drakken continued, "And there's a random factor in there as well, because the structure of your brain is different, so there might not have been a place to copy some things."

"In other words, I know a lot, but I don't remember anything. I already knew that."

"Well, yes, She-, uh, Sheryl. But now you know why!" Drakken apparently thought that was important.

"Great. You know what? I need underwear." I turned to leave.

"Sheryl!" Kim gestured at my legs. "Wait a second." She turned to one of the henches that had dusted himself off. "Go get her pants."


	6. Monique

**Chapter 6: Monique**

* * *

And so they went shopping. Bickering first, then shopping.

"You can't use her money!"

"Why not?"

"I told you. It's stolen."

"Okay, so first of all, it's not. It's money she got paid for being Drakken's lieutenant. Second, so what if it was? I didn't steal it. Ron didn't steal it. You want me to go naked because some other woman was a bad person?"

"I don't want you to go naked!"

"Well?" Sheryl softened her tone. "Look. It's not stolen money. At least, I don't think it is. And it's not like I'm buying weapons for terrorists or something. I need a bra, for fuck's sake! And think about it. I can't just stroll into Needless Markup with an account number. I'll have to move the money into your account, and we'll use your card. So you have control."

Kim looked closely into Sheryl's eyes. She noted the green, not the bright emerald green of Shego's eyes, but a lighter shade, with flecks of hazel. Sheryl did her best to look guileless. From Kim's expression, she was not terribly successful. Still, the hero relented.

"Fine. Give Wade the account stuff, and he'll put some money in my bank account. We can use my debit card at the store"

"Whoa there, Pumpkin! I'm not giving him the numbers. You'll have him donating it to a good cause, or sending it to some crime victim, or something. I can do an online transfer. I'll do it myself."

So, with a stop at the Possible house for some financial clickery, the pair went to Middleton Mall. According to Kim, the only choice for buying clothes was Club Banana. And she had an employee discount. Sheryl thought hard, but her knowledge of clothes-buying seemed to be limited to Smarty Mart or custom tailoring, so she went along with the decision.

Club Banana did have attractive clothing, much of which appealed to Sheryl. And it had an assistant manager whom she instantly recognized, who appealed even more.

"Sheryl, this is-"

"Monique. Yes, I know." Sheryl smiled broadly. "I remember Monique. Hi, Monique."

"You remember Monique?"

"Well, not really remember. More like know about. Monique. Good friend of yours. Likes Bueno Nacho. Beautiful. Thinks Pain King is the best pro wrestler ever, which may be her only flaw." Sheryl's eyes roamed the young black woman's physique, then returned to above the neck. "Hi, Monique."

Monique looked quizzically at Kim, eyes flicking nervously to Sheryl and back. Kim explained, "This is Sheryl. Um, you remember Shego, I used to talk about Shego?"

"Um-hmm."

"And you know about DNAmy."

"Oh, no..."

"DNAmy managed get Shego and Ron into a blending thing. And she put them together, and, uh, Sheryl happened."

"Uh-huh." Monique looked closely at Sheryl. "I can see some resemblance to Ron, and she does look a bit like the picture in your locker."

"You have Shego's picture in your locker, Pumpkin? What have you been hiding?" Sheryl's eyebrows rose suggestively.

"Don't get your hopes up, Sheryl. Drakken's was there, too," the redhead riposted.

Deep brown eyes ping-ponged from one woman to the other as they talked. "So, y'know, why? MNS, Kim. Even for DNAmy, this is kind of crazy."

Sheryl answered. "Makes no sense, right, but this is Amy. From what she said, she wanted to get Shego's green glow and Ron's blue whatever-the-fuck together, so I could save her dear sweet Monty Monkeyfool. But I don't want to."

In response to the black girl's questioning look, Kim offered, "That's pretty much it."

"So, Sheryl has the fireballs, and Ron's MMP?"

"Yep. I can whip up the green, no problem." Sheryl demonstrated with a quick swirl. Monique looked frantically around, hoping nobody had seen. "The blue I'm not so sure of. MMP? I have it, I think, but I don't really know how it works."

"KID, girl! The customers aren't gonna be cool with the fiery hands of death stuff!"

Kim was more thoughtful. "Yeah, that's kind of like Ron. He had the Mystical Monkey Power when he needed it, but really didn't know how to use it."

"So, yeah, I'll work on that. Maybe. In the meantime, underwear."

Monique led the way to Club Banana's modest lingerie section. Sheryl looked around at the offerings, and suddenly became hesitant. She began to blush, and Monique quickly noticed.

"What's wrong, Sheryl?"

"Umm, I've never, I don't..." She backed away. "Let's buy some pants, okay? I need those, too."

"Sheryl? You need to wear something while trying on pants. It's kinda, I don't know, unsanitary otherwise?"

Monique agreed. "I don't know if it's a real rule, but yeah. Nobody would like it if you didn't. So undies first."

Sheryl was looking more and more uncomfortable. Finally she blurted, "I don't remember anything about this. I don't, um..."

Kim said thoughtfully, "I guess Ron wouldn't have known anything about womens' underthings, so maybe that's why?"

"Shego would have though, wouldn't she? Unless she never wore any? I guess-"

"She wore underwear." Both other women looked strangely at her, and Kim blurted, "What? I remember from a mind-control sitch. She even had an apron!"

Sheryl shrugged and shook her head. Monique chimed in, "How about I pick out some basic panties for you, Sheryl? I mean, you have to know how to put them on, right? So here, these dark green would look good on you." She plucked a package of three bikini-cut panties from a shelf. "Go put on a pair. For bras, how about you go to Cup and Saucy on the other side of the mall? They specialize in lingerie, and they'll be able to fit a bra for you. It will be expensive, but it's worth it."

Sheryl was staring directly at Monique's chest. "Do you buy there?"

"Uh, yeah, sometimes." The teenager gestured. "We have pretty good stuff, but it's not our specialty. And, they can fit you better. So, a little indulgence, it's a good thing."

Sheryl was suddenly grinning again. "Okay, let's get me looking good. Then I'll go indulge." She turned to Kim. "I put two grand into your account. Let's blow some on indulgences."

 _~o~o~o~_

The next few weeks went along without much drama. Sheryl stayed with the Possibles, much of the time alone in the guest room. She read, and she played video games. She emerged to work out with Kim, sparring and practicing martial arts forms. Her other primary occupation was cooking. She happily shared the kitchen with Anne, who appreciated the cheerful help. She was also willing to cook on her own, serving the family a variety of dishes, fusing cuisines without fear or favor.

A couple of days into her stay, the two women visited Global Justice's Middleton headquarters. The interview was much less painful than either Kim or Sheryl had feared. Sheryl knew something of Betty Director, and recognized her when the two entered the GJ leader's office. For her part, the law enforcer eyed the pale woman with interest.

"So you're Sheryl, our new concern."

"Uh, I don't know why you'd think of me that way. I haven't done anything."

Betty smiled slightly. "You haven't done anything, yet. And maybe you won't. Maybe you're more Ron Stoppable than Shego. But you apparently have Shego's powers, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do. But that doesn't mean anything."

"I hope not." Director turned her eye to Kim. "You spent a lot of money at Middleton Mall recently."

Kim started. "Yes. We had to buy Sheryl some- You're spying on me!"

Betty was already shaking her head. Gesturing at Sheryl, she replied, "We're spying on her. And I think that's reasonable, since all we know about her is that she has much of Shego's capabilities. Apparently, she was more than able to hold her own against several armed henches. Without resorting to her powers."

"Well, to be fair, Drakken doesn't really hire top of the line."

"Hey! I was good! There were eight of those guys."

"Sure. I'm just saying, Shego could have taken twice that many. So we don't know how much of her ability you have."

"What do you want me to do? Go pick a fight with the Eighty-second Airborne?"

Betty jumped in. "We don't want you to pick a fight with anyone. To tell the truth, we're not sure what we want. We know what we don't want, and that's for you to be Shego. Has anybody asked what _you_ want?"

Sheryl snorted. "Are you kidding? Pretty much, everybody just wants me gone. Kim wants Ron, not me. DNAmy wants Monty, and I'm not giving him to her. Drakken probably wants Shego back. Me? I don't know." She stopped. "I really don't," she continued slowly. "I know some things I don't want. I don't want to be Ron, or Shego. I don't want to be a villain. I know a lot about that, even if I don't remember it, and it's not a great thing. But I don't know much about myself yet." She shrugged. "I don't want to go back to high school. I already said I don't want to be a villain. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be a hero." Another shrug. "Meh."

The GJ leader considered her. "Well, we don't need to worry for a bit, I think." She pushed a card case across her desk towards them. "I've taken the liberty of having a little ID made up for you. There's a driver's license, which I will thank you not to use until you're sure you know how. There's a social security card. The number's good. With those, you can get your own bank account. There's no passport, because there's no birth certificate, because there's no birth. And I don't even want to think about how easy it was to say that."

"And you don't want me traveling anyway."

"I admit we feel it best if you stay local for a while."

Kim had opened the card case. "Sheryl Du? You gave her Will's last name?"

Sheryl grabbed the driver's license. "What the fuck?"

Betty grinned. "Yes. You don't have a family name, and this gives us a bit of a connection to you." She shrugged theatrically. "Of course, if you don't want the documents, you don't have to take them."

Sheryl looked at her darkly. "But there's no other way to get ID without committing crimes, and then you'd have a reason to have a 'connection' anyway."

"Sheryl. We don't know much about you. This gives you some freedom of motion, and the ability to get on with your life. It gives us a means to keep tabs. It's good for both of us. If you want to go underground, we can't stop you, but we'd rather you didn't. This seems like a good compromise."

"Take it, Sheryl. It's a good deal. It's not like GJ is going to stop watching you if you don't."

"Yeah, I guess so," the other grumbled. She examined the cards. "According to this, I'm twenty. I can't even buy booze. And the birthday is just a few days ago."

Betty nodded. "The day you were, um..."

"Created? Built? Blended? Decanted?"

"Whatever." The director waved a hand. "It seemed to fit."

"Yeah. But it means I have to wait a whole year for a party."

 _~o~o~o~_

A trip down the "feminine hygiene" aisle at the supermarket clued Sheryl in to a whole new universe of things that she didn't know about being a twenty year old woman, and led to a long conversation with Anne Possible.

"Shego had to know all this stuff. She was like thirty years old or something. Jeeze! You'd think I'd know something as simple as that."

"You mean your birthday? But that's a question that really can't have two answers, can it? So from what I've heard, that's one of those things that would cancel out."

"Like 'girl or boy', I guess," Sheryl reluctantly agreed.

"It feels odd to have this conversation with you, but it's pretty much the same things I told Kimberly when she was thirteen." Anne spent the next half hour explaining the basics of conception, menstruation, and products relating to them. Some of the more theoretical bits Sheryl already knew. None of the application aspects were familiar.

"And, of course, you need to see a gynecologist. I go to Spencer Ekulum at the hospital, and Kim sees Vinnie Strups. Or you can choose your own."

"Spencer? Vinnie? I'm not letting some guy go up my skirt. And why do I need one? I'm not getting pregnant. I don't even like guys."

"Spencer is male, yes. It doesn't bother me. Vinnie's name is Veronica. I don't know how she got to be called 'Vinnie'. Sometimes it's V.J. Kim's like you; she doesn't feel comfortable with a male gynecologist. And you need one because you need an examination. We need to be sure that everything was properly reproduced."

"You've been waiting all morning to say that, haven't you?"

 _~o~o~o~_

Several days after their initial trip to Middleton Mall, Sheryl rode with Kim as she went in for her afternoon shift at Club Banana. As the redhead went to sign in, Sheryl found Monique folding shirts in the Teen section.

"Hi, Monique."

"Hey, GF. What's up?"

"Well, I was thinking. There's theater in this mall with like eighteen movies, and I'd love to take you to see one of them."

The black beauty stood and turned to face the other girl. Sheryl's eyes flicked down to her bosom, and back up. Monique's eyes twinkled. "At least you're mostly looking above my neck today."

The other flushed, an odd look with with her pale green skin. "Hey, I was, um, I mean, you're really hot, uh."

Monique laughed. "It's okay. I guess you're having enough trouble figuring things out without me giving you grief. And like I said, you're not staring at my boobs any more." Which of course led to the other woman again glancing down, then guiltily fixing her eyes again on Monique's.

"So, was that you asking me out?"

"Uh, yeah."

"When?" Monique turned back to her work.

"Whenever. I mean, I know you have to work, but I have a driver's license now. I don't have a car yet, but Kim will let me borrow hers if it's free." She shrugged. "And my schedule's pretty open, y'know? I think the Possibles'd be glad to get me out of the house anytime, to tell the truth."

"Well, look. It's pretty clear you're into girls. Right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Okay, well, I'm kind of not on that team, you know?" She was looking at her now. "I mean, I like you, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I'm just not interested that way."

"Oh. Okay, then. I hope you're not offended."

"Of course not. I'm flattered. And I'm happy to go with you to a movie. It's just, I buy my ticket, and you don't think of it as a date. If you do, you're gonna be disappointed. You good with going as friends?"

Sheryl smiled. "Yeah. Even without the goodnight kiss, I think it'd be fun. You good going with a friend that thinks you're really hot and wants to get her lips all over you? 'Cause I don't think I can pretend I'm not interested."

"IACWM. Like I said, I'm flattered. Just, don't want you to get your hopes up."

"If it's all cool with you, it's all cool with me. Can't stop me from wishing, though."

~o~o~o~

The last thing Sheryl needed, according to Sheryl, was a job. The last thing Anne Possible needed, according to Anne Possible, was an idle layabout idly laying about her house.

There was some discussion. Sheryl's contributions largely amounted to declarations that as long as she had access to Shego's money, she had plenty. Other people's contributions included noting that access to Shego's money could be denied at will, that Sheryl needed to get out of the house, and a clear declaration by the good Doctor Possible that while she understood the attraction of indolence, it wasn't something she was going to put up with. Sheryl was going to find something productive to do with her time, or she was getting another place to live.

Truth to tell, Sheryl was getting a bit bored. Kim was at work or at some do-gooder club or something most of the time. The Tweebs were largely interested in Sheryl because one, she was a sexually mature female unrelated to them, and two, they wanted to find out things like DNA contribution ratios from her two 'parents', and the relationship between physical brain structure, memory, and personality, and how her plasma worked. Mostly, how her plasma worked, and what she could blow up with it. She suggested that human flesh and bone were likely targets, and they calmed down a bit. In any case, they were poor company at best.

Also, Sheryl did not want to find another place to live. As it was, she had access to a kitchen, to laundry, and to the internet. She did what chores were asked of her. The Possibles liked her cooking, and she liked that they liked her cooking. She had a sneaking suspicion that, left on her own, she'd wind up subsisting on ramen and take-out, if only out of laziness.

It turned out that Sheryl did not have a great many saleable skills, and no resumé at all. Her obvious skill set included martial arts and cooking. Without documentation, she couldn't get a job teaching the first, and she had no desire to stand around a commercial kitchen getting yelled at for minimum wage. Her green glow was primarily good for destroying things, which while cool as anything, was not in particular demand. And it turned out that Colorado required a lot of training and permits to be allowed to blow things up. Natural talent was not enough.

As so often the case, it was Rufus who provided the answer. He was living on the dresser in Kim's room; though Hana loved the little rodent, Mrs. Stoppable did not think she was old enough to care for him. The minimal supplies that had been brought with his cage ran out quickly, and a trip to Smarty Mart was arranged. Kim, Sheryl, and Rufus walked into the Warehouse of Remarkable Savings pushing a cart. Kim stared blankly around, and Sheryl knew exactly where everything was. By the end of the day, she had a red vest and orders to be there at eight the next morning for orientation.

"No name tag?" Kim wanted to know.

"Smarty Mart doesn't use name tags. They cost money, and people just yell, 'Hey! You in the red shirt', anyway."

"Ron always said that the guys in the red shirts were the ones that died in 'Space Trek'."

"He was right. Or is it, I was right? Anyway, yeah. So it's a red vest. Not a red shirt. But Smarty Mart customers shop smart. Doesn't mean they _are_ smart."

"It says right there in the motto, 'where smart shoppers shop smart'. Are you saying that's wrong?" Kim teased.

"Your mom ever shop here?"

"No."

"Your dad ever shop here?"

"No."

"You know anybody smarter than your mom and dad who shops here?"

Kim wondered if Wade ever shopped at Smarty Mart. Probably not. Wade wasn't going to leave his room for Smarty Mart.

"Point taken."

 _~o~o~o~_

And so the next few weeks went, placidly along in their petty pace from day to day. Sheryl was rapidly removed from any position requiring direct contact with the Smart Shoppers at Smarty Mart, instead spending her shifts keeping the sections for which she was responsible stocked and in order. It gave her something to occupy her time, it gave her a reason to leave the house, and she found she got a genuine satisfaction in maintaining the order of her sections. There was something pleasing about a place for everything, and everything in its place.

It also gave her money with which to open a bank account, which allowed her to get a credit and debit card, and which she could use to take Monique on what she kept hoping would be dates.

The fourth of those outings was to Middleton Arena, when the Global Wrestling Association brought Pain King to defend his title against the up-and-coming star, Ranger Danger. Steel Toe was out of contention for the season, which Sheryl insisted was due to an evil conspiracy on the part of the referees.

"Or, it could be because Steel Toe also has a granite head, and Pain King kicked his aluminum ass all over the ring last month," Monique pointed out.

"Oh, come on! You know PK couldn't touch Steel Toe without the refs throwing things for him! He was just about to put King in a wrap-out pile-over when the ref whistled for no reason. They distracted the Toe, and that's the only reason King got out."

The two squabbled good-naturedly all the way up to the arena gate. It was only then that Monique realized that at least eighty per cent of the crowd was male, and that she and Sheryl were the only two women without male companions. Coupled with the near-uniform whiteness of the audience, she felt very out of place. She was used to being one of only a few African-Americans in many crowds, but this was an unusual level of discomfort.

Sheryl did not seem to feel it at all. They took their seats in the front row of the upper level, with a great view of the ring, and soon Monique forgot her distress in the over-the-top drama of the strutting wrestlers, shouting managers, and bloviating announcers describing ever more outlandish characters, desperate life stories, and grudge matches. She knew it was all show and blow, but it was fun show and blow.

After the match, as the young women strolled through the dimly lit parking lot to Sheryl's borrowed car, her disquiet returned. Many of the men had had several drinks, and the testosterone overdrive of the wrestling matches had some of them straying beyond the bounds of decorum. A few catcalls were heard, and ignored. As they approached their car, however, they had to pass close to a trio of oversized, overmuscled, and overserved men who fixed them with greedy eyes.

"You ladies wanna party? We're gonna head out to a bar and have a few drinks. We'd be happy to have you both join us!" The words were polite, but the leers on the mens' faces were not.

Sheryl did not slow. "Sounds like fun, but we promised Momma we'd be home early to sing at church in the morning." She waved a hand at the trio and ignored whatever they shouted back.

It was a quiet drive back to Monique's place. Sheryl made a couple of comments about the matches, but her companion returned only single word replies.

"Anything wrong?"

"No, sorry. Just dristacted. Distracted, that is."

"Okay. Uh, anything I can-"

"No, it's good. Just give me a minute, okay?"

"Sure."

They got to the black girl's house, where only a single light showed. Her parents were away visiting relatives, and her older brother was at college. Sheryl always made a show of chivalrously walking Monique to her door. And as always, when they got to the stoop, she put her hand on the other's hip and moved in for a good-night kiss. Monique always responded with a laugh, lightly slapping the hand away and reminding Sheryl that they were not dating.

This night, Sheryl was already pulling back when she realized that Monique had not objected. Instead, the smaller girl was waiting, her face up. After a tiny, surprised pause, Sheryl continued forward. The kiss was awkward, even a little uncomfortable. Sheryl had gotten used to the way things were. She paused, looked confused for a moment, then moved back in. At this point, a hand was against her chest, pushing her away.

"Thanks, Sheryl. It was a fun night."

"So, um, you kissed me."

"Yes. You okay with that?"

"Oh boy yes indeed. But, um, does this mean, well, um, what does it mean?"

"It means thanks, Sheryl, I had a good time. It means I like you enough to kiss you."

"Does it mean this was a date?"

"Nope. But it means next time is, if you want it to be."

The grin on Sheryl's face threatened to split it in half. "Oh yes. Yes I want."

 _~o~o~o~_

"OMG, SAB!"

"Monique? SAB?"

"Such a boy, Kim. Sheryl can be such a boy!"

The two were folding clothes at Club Banana. Their shifts overlapped by an hour, and Monique was getting ready to leave.

"So last night, she takes me to Havana Harbor, the Cuban place, right? Nice dinner, and she's looking real good in those jeans she bought last week. So she takes me home, and-"

"Hold it. She took you to dinner? Like, she took you."

"Yeah. It was like our first real date."

"You're dating her." There was a warning note in Kim's voice.

"Yeah." Monique looked with curiosity at the redhead. "Does that bother you?"

"No. Yes. I don't know." Kim was clearly troubled.

"It's not that she's a girl, right? 'Cause I've known you forever, and that ain't you."

"No, not that." Kim shook her head. "It's, she's Ron, you know?"

"No, she isn't. If she was Ron, you'd be dating her. And if she was Shego, you'd be fighting her. This is Sheryl, and she's not them. Maybe she's like them in some ways. I mean, I always knew Ron thought I was hot. Sheryl does, too. But she's got the confidence to do something about it. I bet that comes from Shego."

"Ron thought you were hot?"

The black girl gave her a look of pity. "Yes, he did. So what? He never said anything, and then you were dating. It's not like he's supposed to go blind when you started going steady. How did you not notice?"

"I don't know. It never occurred to me."

"And it didn't have to. He's a good boy, and he wasn't going to stray."

Kim still looked uncomfortable. "Yeah. I know." Heavy sigh. "Amy got the genetic zipper rebuilt weeks ago. She still wants Sheryl to bring Fiske back, but she's getting bored waiting. Wade's learning bunches from talking with her, but he still doesn't know much about how Sheryl came to be Sheryl."

"And you're thinking that the longer she's who she is, the less she's going to think about going back? I think that ship sailed, Kim."

"So you're okay with dating what used to be Ron?"

Monique took a moment to answer. "She doesn't feel like Ron, girlfriend. She's not even a guy, for one thing."

"Yeah. But sometimes she's 'such a boy'?"

Monique smiled. "Yeah. Nobody else was home last night. So we're on the carpet, making out-"

"On the floor?"

"Yeah. Couch gets too claustrophobic. And I get sweaty. So we're on the floor, and she starts doing pushups. Like, on top of me. She comes down, and kisses, and then pushes herself back up. And I can see I'm supposed to be all impressed by how strong she is. And it's just so silly, IHTL. She didn't get offended or anything."

"You had to laugh? It's good she didn't get offended. A boy probably would have."

"Yeah. And, I like that she's strong. But you know, that's something I don't think she knows about being a girl. You don't either, I bet."

"What's that?"

"Well, every time I go anywhere, just me or with another girl, I know something could happen. It probably won't, but it could. Pretty much any guy out there is bigger than me. When we were at the wrestling match, I was a little nervous leaving. I mean, I'm pretty much the only black girl, and we're the only girls without guys. And some of the guys were kinda staring, you know?

"For you, and for Sheryl, that just doesn't matter. Some guy tries something, you kick him into next week. You know you can do that. Most of us can't. It's a different world for us."

Kim considered. "Yeah, you're right. I just don't think about things like that."

"I do, Kim. Every girl does, every time she's out by herself. Except you and Sheryl."


End file.
